Thank you, Madam Chair. The Minister has a very important department that deals with the basics of our land, water, air, life, and the
way we look at things. It’s very important. I’m not very pleased that his budget is being reduced. It actually should be going up. I’m not the one to make that decision. This budget here is low. The Minister has some very key initiatives that need to be looked at.
The Minister talked about the Mackenzie River Basin and the quality and quantity of water entering the Northwest Territories from neighbouring jurisdictions. In our land claim agreement it states, in the Sahtu Land Claim Agreement and probably as well as with other Aboriginal groups that have settled land claims, about the quality and quantity of the water not changing. If the Minister is working on the transboundary water agreements and if we are starting to see some changes, as people have noticed in my region, there are changes to the water quality, our water, then the federal government is not honouring their commitment, the spirit and intent of this specific chapter when we signed this land claim agreement.
The federal government has initiated some water monitoring community-based and it’s in the government’s plans right now, and I believe Fort Smith and Fort Resolution have been identified as two communities that have these water monitoring stations, community-based stations. There might be other ones that maybe the Minister could help me clarify. I think by having them in Fort Smith and Fort Resolution is a good start because that’s sort of the bottleneck where Fort McMurray, the Bennett Dam, the pulp mills, the Peace River, all that stuff is coming down. We don’t know what’s coming down. I know there are other monitoring stations in the North through Environment Canada and I believe that Minister Kent kept them open. I think there are 22 or 23. I could be corrected on that.
The Minister has a responsibility to ensure that our water is safe and that the other jurisdictions are not dumping their sewer waste into our system and that we’re going to be okay. A lot of my people live on the Mackenzie River. A lot of my people eat food from the Mackenzie. Lots of my people live off the land. We hunt moose and caribou and we certainly know that these animals also use the Mackenzie to sustain their life.
I want to make sure that we have a strong agreement that we could face the government of BC or Alberta or Saskatchewan and say this is what’s happening. This is what’s happening in our waters here. Make our agreement so strong that it would shut down possibly one of the industries to say quit putting your garbage into our water system.
We know the water is changing. I’ve talked to some elders in Fort Providence and they noticed that their fish is getting softer. They said a long time ago, about 50 years ago, the fish was firm. Now they say the fish are getting softer. Their body is soft, not like it used to be 50 years ago. That tells me
something’s happening. I don’t know if it’s permafrost happening or climate change or the amount of chemicals in our water. Are we testing for the right chemicals? Are we testing for poison coming into our water? What are they dumping in our water from McMurray or the Bennett Dam?
This Minister has a lot of work. I look forward to his continued work and his continued charge on why we need a strong transboundary agreement with the other governments.
The Minister is also responsible for the Energy Efficiency Incentive Program. I look forward to seeing what type of support he’s also going to give to the people in Norman Wells. In his statement he provided focused assistance to the residents of Inuvik over the next year. I want to hope that the Minister would also do that for the community of Norman Wells for their support.
Within the limited time I have I want to ask the Minister in the recycling area that we have, I wanted to see if somewhere in his upcoming business plans or future discussions with his department he did a good job with the pop cans and plastic bags. I’d like him to see if he would do some work for the next couple years to see how we can get our vehicles out of our local dumps. There are lots of vehicles that could be chopped up with a mulcher in each community and put on the barge in the summertime, brought down south. Then that machine could go to another community and eat up those vehicles and do the same thing. It can be done over four or five years. We have a lot of old vehicles that have been in our dumps for the last I would say 50 or 60 years. I think the Minister should be able to put some plans together on how we get rid of these old vehicles.
I’m happy that the Minister is continuing to work on the Wildlife Act. I look forward to it getting some good discussions and some good air play in our communities. People can talk about the new Wildlife Act. It’s a long overdue act. It’s outdated. We need to modernize it and continue to work on it.
The Minister also has the role of traditional knowledge which I think needs to be supported and continued to have the effects down to different departments and especially his department.
We have some activity happening in the Sahtu and we certainly need to make sure that the cumulative impacts from resource development are monitored and studied up in our region because of the oil and gas play. Wildlife monitoring is taking place up in our region with all the oil and gas activity, the mining in the mountains. We need to know what’s happening with the permafrost. If they’re going to be drilling and doing hydraulic fracking, we need to have somebody on the ground looking at this type of thing that’s going to maybe be significantly ramped up in terms of resource development.
I look forward to going through some of the business plans, and I really hope that we have a good fire season and that it doesn’t get too busy and that this government here or this department here continues to support the people who have cabins. We need to know that these fires can be put out on the community’s needs.